Thursday, July 9, 2009

Hi everyone. I know I'm slacking on the blog posting, but my summer job has been tough and having a little bit of extra time has made me feel like I need to be incredibly productive in all areas of life. So now I think I have a lot less time (funny how that works).

One of the only benefits of being diagnosed with IBS a little over two years ago was that it has gotten me into a lot of new foods. One of these foods is mango. It's not something I really ever thought about before, but it is one of the only fruits that has a lot of soluble fiber (the fiber my tummy likes) and so I began trying to eat it. I quickly found out that fresh mango was not for me. It was really tough to peel/cut and I read somewhere that the skin was poison which freaked me out (no idea if this is actually true of course). So I have been buying frozen mango at Trader Joe's for the past year. At first I was not quite sure how to use it, so I just mixed it with yogurt and enjoyed it. That was good, but then I started to be a bit more creative. I made a fantastic lunch mixture of rice, quinoa, black beans, carrots and mango. As per usual, I decided to eat that every day until I got sick of it. The past two nights I have tried some dinner with mango and here are the first results:

Fillet of sole, baked with mango slices on top...yum! Here is my whole dinner including baked potato fries and some carrots (also an excellent source of soluble fiber).

The next day I had some leftover sole, so I decided to mix it with more mango and some quinoa. I didn't even need any sauce, the mango added delicious sweetness, yum.

If you have never had mango, or haven't had it in awhile- give it a try. You'd be surprised by all the places you'll find to put it. I also make delicious smoothies with mango and banana, but I ran out of bananas so I haven't had one in a few days.

On a different note, I have continued to train for the triathlon in a low key sort of way. I know I said I am not going to do it, but I actually probably am- just very slowly and carefully. I am at the point now where I no longer mind if I am last, because it probably means I was taking good care of my knee. I think I'll be in a better place to take a long rest and deal with my knee after I complete this goal for myself. Given the fact that I ran on my knee for almost a month before I went to the doctor, I think running one more time will not kill it. Plus I am most likely going to walk the whole time since I haven't actually run in over a month now and I am not one of those people who can just bust out 3 miles without any training. So today I did 22 laps in the pool and an 8 mile bike ride. I'm going to continue to take it easy but also make sure I get some quality pool time in. I'm sure I'm going to regret not doing an open water swim before the tri, but I'm going to tell everyone to keep a CLOSE eye on me in the water to watch for drowning. Haha...not funny though. Tomorrow is Friday, yay!!!

So, I tried to post a comment on your blog yesrterday but it wouldn't work! It was strange. What I said was, I had no idea there was so much soluble fiber in mango! Really, I didn't even know there was any, I figure they were all sugar :) Oops!Also, I've eaten the skin by accident before, and I' still alive! Yeah!